


Smoke Break

by SkysongMA



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-09
Updated: 2016-06-09
Packaged: 2018-07-14 03:11:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7150676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SkysongMA/pseuds/SkysongMA
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fred’s wake isn’t so bad, really.</p><p>After all, by this point, George has been to so many funerals he’s beginning to lose track. And there are more coming. The thought is somehow worse than George’s death. He can stand his own grief; it’s everyone else’s that’s killing him. Everyone at the Burrow seems determined to corner him and tell him this joke or that funny memory, like that will somehow make the world worth laughing about again. He’s drowning. Molly tries to hug him for the hundredth time that day, and that’s it—George leaves.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Smoke Break

They’ve fixed Fred up right nice; he could be sleeping. There’s not even any blood. George’s not sure if he likes that—Fred thought it’d be dashing to go to the grave all beaten up. He kisses his brother’s raspy cheek. Before Fred died, he was trying to grow a beard, but to no avail.  Only Bill, Percy, and Ron really need to shave.

 

“Love you, Freddie,” he whispers. He keeps his voice too low for anyone, even the family crowding him, to hear. “Wait up for me, okay?”

 

***

 

Fred’s wake isn’t so bad, really.

 

After all, by this point, George has been to so many funerals he’s beginning to lose track. And there are more coming. The thought is somehow worse than George’s death. He can stand his own grief; it’s everyone else’s that’s killing him. Everyone at the Burrow seems determined to corner him and tell him this joke or that funny memory, like that will somehow make the world worth laughing about again. He’s drowning. Molly tries to hug him for the hundredth time that day, and that’s it—George leaves.

 

Fred would have had some horrible remark to make, something that would make Molly cry even harder than she has been all day, but George can’t stand watching his mother cry; it’s like watching the whole world crumble in front of him. For once in his life, George is glad he’s the level-headed one, the one who always grabbed Fred by the collar and yanked him back—not before he plunged over the edge of madness, but before he really started to fall. A little madness keeps things interesting, after all.

 

So he goes outside and stands in the gnome-free garden. It might stay that way this time. Molly keeps going to pieces whenever she encounters something of Fred’s, and so the rest of the family has taken over cleaning duties—their father especially. The gnomes have become the enemy, since they send their mother into fits.

 

George misses them. Not because they were funny—they were little blighters—but they would have given him something to do. Everyone seems to think he’s so crippled. He wants to clean the house, make the food, do _something_ , but every time he tries, someone whisks the task away from him and tells him to go sit down. Even Ginny’s doing it.

 

All right, sometimes he forgets Fred is dead for a minute or two, and when he remembers again, it’s like all the air’s been sucked out of the world and he _has_ to sit down, but that’s different. That’s just… life. It doesn’t mean he can’t do for himself, and his family should know better.

 

He runs a hand over his hair and sighs, sitting on the old stump they used as a goal-post in Quidditch. Hopefully, Bill and Fleur will have kids soon. It’ll be easier to come home when there’s someone running around the yard screaming again. (He hasn’t thought about going back to the shop yet; every time it seems it might come up, he squashes it, because that would bury him.)

 

The door to the backyard bangs open and shut; George doesn’t look up, in the vain hope that whoever it is will mistake him for a different Weasley and leave him be. Now that Fred’s dead, it’s so much harder to go unnoticed. He presses his palms against his face and sighs again. The person who came outside swears, and George lifts his head.

 

It really is Angelina Johnson.

 

George is confused, but not in a bad way—he’s come to like surprises. They make it easier to cope. She’s looking quite nice in a Muggle dress. (Pretty girls also make it easier to cope.) One dark hand is cupped around a lit cigarette, and she’s scowling at it the way she used to scowl at the Quaffle when she missed a catch during practice. Like somehow scowling will make whatever is irritating her realize its mistake and go her way.

 

She lifts her head, and her eyes go wide. Oh, shit, here it goes. George turns away, resting his elbows on his knees. But, after a moment, she swears again. George frowns and looks at her. “What’s the matter with you, then?” He wishes he could sound something other than grumpy these days—it would probably make everyone pity him less. But his mouth and his brain didn’t seem to communicate much anymore.

 

Angelina looked at him curiously, as though wondering why he would ask how she was at his twin’s funeral. Then she shrugged. Angelina never did have time for pointless questions. “I’m trying to smoke. It’s not working very well.”

 

“Er,” said George.  Angelina looked sadly at her cigarette. “…I didn’t know you smoked.”

 

Angelina shrugged. For a moment, he saw an echo of the grief in everyone else’s faces—and then she scowled, as though conquering her feelings by sheer will. But why wouldn’t she? That was how she treated everything else. “I don’t. But… well, if I was going to start, wouldn’t you say today’s the day?”

 

George looked at his hands. “I’m not sure any day’s the day for smoking.” He hadn’t talked this much without someone crying on him in days. He’d forgotten what it was like.

 

Angelina considered this, scrutinizing the cigarette the way she sized up homework assignments and moves in chess. Then she dropped the cigarette and ground it under her heel. “I reckon you’re right about that.” She folded her arms over her chest; the stubborn jut of her chin was familiar and comforting, as was the too-sharp gaze she turned on him. “Now then. What are you doing out here?”

 

Suddenly, he wanted to hug her. Not in a grieving, “hold me or I’ll fall over” way—in a “I haven’t seen you since you graduated, and I’ve missed you” way. But he kept sitting on the stump, staring at her, because she’d think he was barking if he tried to explain. He wasn’t even sure if he could explain it.

 

He realized she was waiting for an answer and shrugged. “It was too loud inside.”

 

“True enough,” said Angelina. For a moment, she pities him, and then she doesn’t, which is a pleasant change. “That’s why I came out here, anyway. Nobody but our lot knows me very well, anyway—felt like I was intruding.”

 

He feels like he should tell her she wasn’t, but she probably already knows that. He still wants to tell her.

 

But he gets to his feet and sighs again. “I should probably go back in. Mum’ll be looking for me.” She will be—Molly seems to think that if George gets out of her sight for more time than it takes to go to the toilet, he’ll off himself.

 

When he reaches the back door, Angelina stops him with a hand on his arm. Her fingers are light, warm; she looks at him with a kind of seriousness he’s never seen before, which is odd because Angelina doesn’t do much _but_ serious. She brushes her hand over his cheek—which, like Fred’s, is stubbly but not enough to make him look anything but stupid. “I’m sorry.” She presses a slip of paper in his hand and backs off. “I’ve got a place in London now. You ought to visit sometime.”

 

George nods and tucks the paper into his pocket. “Yeah. ‘Course.” He doesn’t mention he has no idea when he’ll have the balls to go back to London. Angelina respects him, and he wants it to stay that way. Angelina nods back and looks out over the garden, and George goes back in to his family.


End file.
